Danny retired from the whole hero thing, but Dani spent time travelling the world. Finding herself.
The first time Vlad tried to apologize she’d run, not ready to here him out. That he’d let her go is what makes up her mind about hearing him out the next time they cross paths.
Dani still explores the world, but she does it on Vlad’s dime. She visits on holidays and sometimes at random.
She does heroing on her travels, just here and there in between pickpocketing and getting the necessities.
With Vlad’s money meeting her survival needs she fills the extra time with more heroing, and occasionally with tailing heroes.
Some might call it stalking, but she prefers to call it job shadowing.
And okay, maybe some of it is personal curiosity.
Like when she follows Superman after a fight, eager to see if he really spends all of his spare time brooding in a frozen castle.
Finding out he daylights as just some news guy is interesting - and funny, given the ‘harmless giant’ persona he has going for him. So maybe she extends her…'job shadowing’ just a bit.
She wants to see a day in the life. So sue her.
The Very Normal Apartment is pretty far from what she expected.
When he swaps back to Superman and leaps from his balcony again not long after, and instead of going to a fight in the city he flies up? She keeps on following, invisible and intangible all the while as an extra precaution.
She follows his to a space station that appears to have been made as a base for the JL - judging by the presence of various other members.
It doesn’t take long for the last of the JL to arrive and the meeting to start; she expected it to be boring, intended to just spend the time getting a closer look at costumes and weapons.
Until Batman announces that the meeting is about ‘the clone.’
Superman’s clone. That Superman refers to as an it, that he speaks with hatred and vitriol in his voice.
Dani is just in time for the first debrief on the topic. The full debrief. Which means she has all the information she needs about who made him, what he looks like.
Who has physical versus technical custody.
Where to look for evidence.
Lex Luthor is a Known Bastard and Superman clearly has no intention to play caring parent for the kid that was wrenched into existence - through no fault of his own - with no support structure to fall back on and no real identity in the world.
Dani knew what that was like. Dani had spent years of her life as a ghost in both senses of the word.
Vlad coming around to being non-fruitloopy had tethered her. She’d rejected his offer for an official legal identity before, but he’d made her a few fakes with which to pursue an education.
She’d avoided the sciences at first just to differentiate herself from the Danny she was created to be. But eventually she fell in love with learning about different languages, different cultures. It was an extension of her obsession, in a way, and she latched on with fervor.
Vlad had tricked her into giving math and the sciences a go by offering her books about the evolution of numbers as a part of language and the history of the use of Greek and Latin in the sciences. She’d learned enough to graduate high school, if she wanted.
She goes to Vlad with what she has on the clone - ‘Connor’ - and asks him to find a way to help.
Copyright is a fascinating thing.
Once someone is proven to have broken a copyright, they must cease and desist from further breakage and either destroy the existing works that breach the copyright or give the works over to the copyright owner.
Even as a clone, Connor was a person. “Destroying’ him would be entirely off the table, making it a matter of custody.
Custody that would rightfully go to Vlad.
If the courts declared Connor’s personhood, Superman may try to claim custody. They would be sure to have all the evidence they needed that he was an unfit guardian - and that Vlad was a perfect one - by then.
Dani was all the evidence they needed that Vlad had the rights to that copyright - in addition to a paper copy he would have backlogged by several years. A hand from Technus and Tucker made the thing - and Danielle’s own legal identity backlogged to the time of her creation - airtight.
She asks Tucker not to mention it to Danny, she wants to explain the situation in person.
Danny, being her original, needs to be on board if they’re going through with this - as both a witness to the fact that she is a clone and because he will be one of the people in spotlight, since he is the original.
Vlad Masters is the most reclusive billionaire in the US, suddenly going public with an adopted daughter that he cloned himself from the DNA of his best friends’ son? And then suing Lex Luthor for breaking his copyright on cloning? By cloning Superman? And then serving him a cease & desist and demanding custody of the clone??? It’s gonna be a media circus.
Danny needs forewarning (they already know he’ll approve, but they need to make sure all of their stories are consistent).
Vlad is the one to talk to Jack & Maddie - they’ve long since been brought up to speed on all of his bullshit. He’s been making strides in apologizing, making it up to them. Danny’s willingness to give him a second chance is the only reason they allow themselves to do the same. Dani visits sometimes.
To avoid Vlad being arrested and unable to help Connor bc of the very illegal way he made Danielle, they plan to explain her as a consensual copy - that Vlad always wanted a child but never really fell in love (maybe he was aroace but just really stuck on the life script of grow up-graduate-get married & got stuck on ‘Maddie’ as the perfect wife, but like, in a feng shui kinda way? Then chilled out when he realized there’s actually nothing wrong with being single? idk).
Except he has Jack & Maddie as his platonic besties & asked if he could clone one of their kids. And Danny was like “oh cool a clone” and they decided his clone would be less likely to have an existential crisis about their clone-ness. And voila.
So yeah Jack, Maddie, Jazz, & Danny all really need to be on board with that or they need to find a better story.
Which is how she finds herself in Gotham, spilling the story to him and brainstorming public, normal, non-suspicious activities she can do while she’s in the spotlight.
He tells her the Spanish teacher at his school is retiring soon. What better way to be visible and non-suspicious than to do what Danny does at his Totally Normal Job ™.
Dani is has a shiny new high school diploma officially under her belt, and years of her life will be explained away as travel. She spent a total of a year and a half in either Mexico or Spain; she knows the language.
Gotham Academy isn’t sure how to feel about a teacher that comes at Danny’s recommendation, but Vlad & Technus’ quickly forged teaching certificate mean she meets the qualifications.
They let her teach for a day as a test, having the old Spanish teacher shadow. Her lessons are a bit more practical, a bit more slang is included, but more than acceptable for the Academy.
She’s surprisingly normal for a teacher that comes at Danny’s recommendation (especially given how similar they look - siblings, perhaps?)
By the third lesson the students think she’s normal.
The beginning of week two is when her…eccentricities start to show.
In the first week she’d learned the chronic texters - there was always one or two, no matter how prestigious the institution.
Mid-lesson one student pats himself down in a panic before raising his hand.
“I’m really sorry Ms. Masters, I think I left my phone in the locker room can I please run and grab it? I promise I’ll be quick!”
“No need, your phone is right here,” she chirps, pulling it out of a pocket somewhere inside her jacket.
“I caught you texting during class three times last week, Mr. Jeremiah. I have a three strikes system; after that, I confiscate your phone until classes are over. If you want to reset your count - which I will only allow once - you can write me a three page paper, en Español - on why texting should not be happening during class. Double-space, Times New Roman, 12pt font. A few of you are at a two already, keep it in mind.”
(She spent a fear years on her own. As a halfa she got by pretty well, after she was stabilized. But she had to learn pickpocketing before that, and she learned it well. Powers just made it all the smoother.)
She never gets caught confiscating a phone, and when she gives them back at the end of class the students are always a mix of relieved and shocked.
After a computer lab quite a few students have snacks they didn’t know were missing returned to them.
Someone notices Ms Masters seems to store everything she confiscates in the same pocket, but some of the things shouldn’t fit - even some single item shouldn’t have. Not without at least being noticeable.
(Dani was a ghost in both senses of the word for a long time. She moved around alot. She did have a bag or two she would phase into walls/the ground, but she stored a lot of things just in herself. Perks of being a halfa: free real estate storage space)
She’s sneaky - she even manages to spook Tim once. Someone notices her footsteps don’t make noise.
Then Dash gets her to help him with a ‘coordinated combat’ (ie how not to do friendly fire/get in each others way when fighting one enemy) lesson and they realize exactly how unhinged she is.
30 people work together to shoot her and she doesn’t take a single hit, making expert use of the dodgeshot shields (random items that people can hide behind from ‘large’ to ‘must be small or a contortionist).
Every time she passes from one shield to the next she takes out three people. A few manage to get in close.
She isn’t where they expect her to be.
She lets out a gentle ‘boo.’
She’s right behind them. The two shriek and whirl around, before they go down in a tangle of limbs when one trips.
She taps her faux-bayonette to either of their throats and says “you’re out.”
The fight is over inside of two minutes.
Dash deems their performance to be ‘worse than Fenturd in freshman year’ and says if they can’t aim they better know how to ambush.
They have to hide throughout The Obstacle Course and try to hit her before she can see them. Bonus points if she doesn’t see them.
She practically hunts them for sport.
Her evil cackling the whole time sees her moved up to ‘most likely to go rogue,’ with Danny a modest second.
A week later when it comes out she’s Mr. Fenton’s clone made by reclusive billionaire Vlad Masters they’re like ‘yeah that tracks.’
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